THE GOVERNMENT OF SIR GUY CARLETON.

Montreal, the population of which had now increased to seven thousand souls, suffered severely this year by a most destructive fire, which broke out on the evening of the 18th April, and consumed nearly one hundred houses. The greatest sympathy was displayed towards the sufferers. In England a considerable sum was raised for their relief, but many were, nevertheless, reduced to poverty. Its citizens suffered also from the arbitrary conduct and petty extortions of the English justices of the peace, whose irregularities, however, were speedily restrained by the action of the Governor. Hitherto, these justices had been allowed a jurisdiction in civil cases to the amount of five pounds currency. This was now taken away, and they were only permitted to decide in criminal matters.* Beyond these events there is not a fact of moment to record at this period. Although America was already heaving in the throes of revolution, the people of Canada remained peaceable, and tolerably contented; while trade was reviving, and the population on the increase. Governor Carleton having obtained the royal permission to proceed to England on leave of absence, Mr Cramahe, as the oldest 1770. member of the Executive Council, assumed direction of the government. The Governor had always been desirous that the French civil laws, or "Coutume de Paris," should be introduced again into the Colony, and already had them compiled by several Canadian advocates of acknowledged ability. This compilation he took with him on his departure for England, and where, soon after his arrival, it was revised by the principal law officers of the Crown, and became the chief authority at once in the Canadian courts,+ as regarded questions affecting land and inheritance. In cases of personal contract, and debts of a commercial character, the English laws remained the practical authorities. This arrangement was cheerfully acquiesced in by the people generally and although there was no fixed standard of decision, and judgment was dealt out sometimes agreeable to French legal authorities, and at other times according to English law, still, as it was evident that justice was always intended, the public were tolerably satisfied with matters as they stood, until more permanent and better defined arrangements could be effected. The criminal law of England, including trial by jury and the Habeas * Debates on the Quebec Bill, p. 128. In one case the costs on suing for 11s. amounted to £4

+ Smith's Hist. Can., vol. ii. p. 60.

:

Corpus, had been fully introduced into Canada,* and appeared to give general satisfaction among the bulk of the people, with the exception that Canadian jurors grumbled a good deal about not being paid for their loss of time. The old French gentry, however, did not like by any means that labourers and mechanics should sit in judgment upon gentlemen, and wondered that the British people should be so fond of trial by jury.‡

The long peace had enabled the Canadian people to recover fully from the effects of war. Trade had now become 1773. more prosperous than ever. Emigrants returned from France; numbers of the Acadians, scattered through the neighbouring colonies, gladly proceeded to this country; and in the space intervening between 1760 and 1773 it was estimated that the population had increased a fourth. In May 1774, General Carleton, in his evidence under oath before a committee of the House of Commons, estimated the population of Canada at one hundred thousand Roman Catholics and four hundred Protestants. The latter were chiefly merchants, officers, and disbanded soldiers, who resided principally at Quebec and Montreal: in one hundred and ten rural parishes there were only nineteen Protestants.§ With the exception of the change in the laws, that there was less peculation on the part of public officials, and that the country was more prosperous, matters remained much in the same state as they were before the conquest. A Governor and Council, although with limited powers, still ruled the Colony, the common people were as uneducated and as simple as ever,|| and the clergy received

* At the present day the old French Code is the basis of civil law in Lower Canada, but the British system of criminal law has been fully in force there since 1770.

+ Under recent Canadian statutes jurors are now paid.

General Carleton to the House of Commons, May 1774. The seigniors actually petitioned the British Parliament on this head in 1773, and against the general introduction of English law. See Debates on the Quebec Bill.

§ The royal proclamation of the 7th October 1763, which provided for the government of Canada, granted to the officers and soldiers engaged in the war in this country, lands in the following proportions-viz., To a field-officer, five thousand acres; captain, three thousand; subaltern, two thousand; sergeants and other non-commissioned officers, two hundred; and privates, fifty acres. Very few, however, claimed these grants, and soldiers preferred to keep public-houses, than engage in agriculture. Strangers to Canadian customs and the language of the people, British settlers disliked the colony, and did very poorly. Many left it altogether in disgust.

|| Volney, a distinguished French traveller, who visited Canada towards the close of the last century, does not draw a very flattering picture of the habitants'

their parochial dues and tithes as punctually as during French dominion. Still, the peasantry began to feel a stray glimmering of independence, and to resist such exactions of the seigniors as they considered were legally unjust.

As the country gradually became more and more prosperous, and thinking people had leisure to look round them and reflect, a good deal of anxiety began to prevail as to the future government of the Colony, and whether the French or English laws would be permanently established. As might naturally be expected, the British settlers were unanimous in favour of English law, and a government based on popular representation. The inhabitants of French origin, on the other hand, generally desired the establishment of their old civil law, but were divided with regard to a House of Assembly. Some supposed that a representative constitution would give the settlers of English origin, who were much better acquainted with this mode of government than themselves, a great preponderance in public affairs. Others leaned to a governor and council, as the mode of government they best understood; while a few of the better informed desired to be ruled by their own representatives, like the other British colonies. Mr Lotbiniere, described by one of the principal law officers of Canada as a very sensible and reflecting man, and a large Canadian landed proprietor, gave it as his opinion before a committee of the House of Commons on the Quebec Bill, in June 1774, that if Roman Catholics were allowed to sit in a House of Assembly there would be no objections made to its establishment. He also stated, that if a Legislative Council were established, and composed in part of the Canadian noblesse, it would have the best effects.+

Such was the unsettled condition of this country, when, in the month of October 1773, meetings were held at Quebec to petition

intelligence. After stating their easy and indolent habits, he observes: "Having several times questioned the frontier Canadians respecting the distances of times and places, I have found that in general they had no clear and precise ideas: that they received sensations without reflecting on them; in short, that they knew not how to make any calculations that were ever so little complicated. They would say to me, from this way to that is one or two pipes of tobacco; you can or you cannot reach it between sunrise or sunset, or the like." Education in Canada before the conquest was entirely restricted to the upper classes and clerical orders. Common schools were unknown, and few of the peasantry could either read or write.

Mr Maseres, Attorney-General, author of "The Canadian Freeholder," and who was strongly opposed to the continuation of the French civil law in Canada. + Debates on the Quebec Bill, pp. 160, 161.

the Deputy-Governor, General Carleton being still absent from the province, to summon a House of Assembly in agreement with the royal proclamation of 1763. The principal Canadians were invited to attend these meetings and take part in the proceedings, but on their declining to do so, the British inhabitants determined to proceed alone in the matter, and after some delays presented their petition to the Deputy-Governor, on the 3d of December. He replied to it a week after by stating "that the matter was of too great importance for the Council of the Province to decide upon, and the more so, as the government appeared likely soon to be regulated by Act of Parliament." A fresh draft of the petition was soon after presented to the Secretary for the Colonies, the Earl 1774. of Dartmouth, but beyond hints that the Province was not yet ripe for a General Assembly, no answer was returned.

In Great Britain the reflecting portion of the community were gradually becoming more aware of the fact, that unless Parliament receded from its assumed right to tax the American colonies, their independence was very near. The hostile position assumed by their Houses of Assembly was ill-calculated to make the British legislature regard popular colonial representation very favourably, and it was now determined to give Canada a different form of government. On the 2d of May a bill, usually known as the Quebec Act, was brought into the House of Lords by the Earl of Dartmouth, which passed without opposition, and was sent down to the Commons for their concurrence. * This bill repealed all the provisions of the royal proclamation of 1763, annulled all the acts of the Governor and Council relative to the civil government and administration of justice, revoked the commissions of judges and other existing officers, and established new boundaries for the province, which was now declared to embrace all ancient Canada, Labrador, and the countries west to the Ohio and Mississippi. The Quebec Act released the Roman Catholic religion in Canada from all penal restrictions, renewed their dues and tithes to its regular clergy, but as regarded members of their own church only, (Protestants being freed from their payment,) and confirmed all classes, with the exception of the religious orders and communities,† in the full possession of their

*The King, on opening Parliament, recommended the question of a government for Canada to its consideration. There can be little doubt that this bill owed its origin principally to himself.

+ With the exception of the Jesuits, whose order was suppressed by the Pope, none of the religious orders or communities of Canada have ever been disturbed in the possession of their property. Their right to this property was clearly left an open question by the Quebec Act.

properties. The French laws were declared to be the rules for decision relative to property and civil rights, while the English criminal law was established in perpetuity. Both the civil and criminal codes, however, were liable to be altered or modified by the ordinances of the Governor and a Legislative Council. This Council was to be appointed by the Crown, and to consist of not more than twenty-three, nor less than seventeen members. Its power was limited to levying local or municipal taxes, and to making arrangements for the administration of the internal affairs of the province; the British Parliament jealously reserving to itself the right of external taxation, or levying duties on articles imported or exported. Every ordinance passed by this Council was to be transmitted within six months, at furthest, after enactment, for the approbation of the King, and if disallowed, to be null and void on his pleasure becoming known in Quebec.

Such were the principal provisions of the Quebec Act, under which Canada was governed for a period of seventeen years. Taking into consideration the want of education among the great bulk of the Canadian people, as well as their ignorance of popular institutions, and of the English laws and language, there can be no doubt that this bill gave them the mode of government best suited to their condition, and was a real boon so far as they were concerned. But to the inhabitants of British origin, who had settled in Canada or the valley of the Ohio,* and were subjected thereby to French laws, and deprived of the right of a jury in civil causes, of the Habeas Corpus, and of a constitutional government, the measure was oppressive in the extreme, and at variance with all their ideas and experience of popular liberty. The law was based on the supposition that the French would remain the dominant race in Canada, as well as on a desire to restrain the progress westward of the Anglo-American population. The American revolution, and the rapid increase of a BritishCanadian population, ultimately placed it in error in both respects, and compelled its repeal. It met with strenuous opposition in the House of Commons, chiefly on the grounds of its being opposed to the British constitution, and granting too extensive territorial limits to Canada. "You have given up to Canada," said Thomas Townshend, "almost all the country which was the subject of dispute, and for which we went to war; extending, in the words of the bill, southward to the Ohio, westward to the Mississippi, and northward to the territory granted to the Hudson's Bay Company."

* It was estimated that over twenty thousand people had already settled in the valley of the Ohio. They were chiefly from Pennsylvania and Virginia.